On Sunday, France’s education minister announced that mobile phones will be banned from primary, junior, and middle schools, calling it a matter of “public health.” While phones are already prohibited in classrooms in France, starting in September 2018 students won’t be allowed to use them on breaks, at lunch, or between lessons either.“These days, the children don’t play at break time anymore,” Jean-Michel Blanquer said, according to the Local, an English-language publication. “They are just all in front of their smartphones and from an educational point of view, that’s a problem.”

Emmanuel Macron, France’s young new president, proposed a similar ban in his campaign earlier this year. Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg also attempted a cellphone ban in 2006, but parents complained of inconsistent enforcement, and that they couldn’t contact their kids. Bill de Blasio, Bloomberg’s successor, lifted that ban in 2015, citing inequity (the policy was more heavily used in schools with metal detectors, which tend to be poorer). Now New York City principals devise their own mobile phone policies, or default to the standard: Students can bring their phones to school but have to keep them out of sight.

Edumorfosis's insight:

The converging mobile technology will ban educators who are only dedicated to transmit content and administer standardized tests...

While students are looking forward to an extended holiday break, chances are administrators are knee deep in budgeting and planning for the next school year. Technology will make up a good portion of this planning, so it’s appropriate to look at some trends for 2018 that are likely to impact edtech purchases.For schools, there are some positive trends that promise to deliver a better edtech learning environment at a more affordable and sustainable cost.

Whether you’re teaching an online course or using digital learning content to enhance your face-to-face class, video is a crucial component to keep students immersed in the subject matter.Digital learning expectations

Here’s the good and the bad news – online learning is changing. Gone are the days when you could just record your 2-hour long lectures, and throw a syllabus onto your LMS. Today’s students expect a more interactive, engaging experience; one that helps them connect with you and their fellow classmates.

So how do you use video as a quality component of your digital learning content in your online or blended courses? Here are ten ways to significantly improve your digital learning content and online teaching (or enhance your in-person classroom).

In his talk, I look at the daily routine of a personal learner, filled with examples and demonstrations. Tagline during the whole talk will be Connectivism, the importance of a Personal Learning Network and the ARRFF model of learning activities (Aggregate Remodel Repurpose Feed Forward) . To top this off, he’ll also offer insights on some newer technologies and his personal thoughts on the future of learning.

Good is almost invisible. As the most powerful piece of back-end, consumer software ever built, it hides behind a simple letterbox. Most successful interfaces follow this example of Occam’s Razor – the minimum number of entities to reach your goal.

Sadly, the LMS does the opposite. Often difficult to access and navigate, it looks like something from the 90s – that’s because it is something from the 90s. The clue is in the middle word ‘management’. The LMS is largely about managing learners and learning, not engagement. But there’s a breakthrough. What we are seeing now are Learning ENGAGEMENT Systems. It is not that the functionality of an LMS is flawed but its UI/UX is most certainly flawed. Basically repositories, the LMS is insensitive to performance support, learning embedded in workflow and makes people do far too much work. They put obstacles in the way of learning and fail the most basic demands for data, as they are trapped in the hideously inadequate SCORM standard.

The rise in its preferability is mainly because of its ease and convenience. The flexibility of online education (i.e. anytime anywhere, any pace) allows students to plan to work and continue their higher education simultaneously with ease.

Online education come in two major forms - one that is for credit courses where students enroll themselves mainly for credits and the second type is for professional training and certification preparations where the purpose is to prepare students for certification exams. In terms of popularity, at this moment the second type of online courses are a little ahead because students mainly prefer to work as well as study alongside to develop their skills.

Even though the rise in the trend of online education is catching up across the world, there are just few countries which have completely stormed in this area. These top countries who are also the leaders of online education have a complete pack in the world of online education. Hence they have soon become a role model for the other countries who too wish to be in the same league.

What will the future of employment in 2030 look like? A 2017 report from Pearson and the U.K.-based innovation foundation Nesta predicts what the working world will be like in the United States and United Kingdom when the current elementary school students begin their careers. This time period spans only the initial stage of their employment, yet researchers project a future—a little more than a decade away—quite different from the present: a workplace strongly shaped by globalization, data-intensive decision making, advances in digital tools and media, and artificial intelligence.

It has been said that grading is more of an art than a science. It can be easy to perform mathematical gymnastics on a stack of numbers, and then feel like we have arrived at a truly accurate grade because the result goes out to three decimal places.

In reality points and percentages can only go so far when evaluating student work. If possible, we can benefit greatly from taking a step back to get a holistic view of what a student has produced. Rather than just counting the number of problems they have missed, we (and they) are better served when we look for the patterns that reveal the reasons behind the mistakes.

One tool that can help move us closer to a fair assessment of student learning is a rubric. A rubric is an evaluation tool that uses a range of criteria to assess a student's skills or performance on a continuum from excellent to poor, with qualitative descriptions for the different levels.

As useful as rubrics can be though, since they are more sophisticated, they can also be a challenge to manage in a digital world. Thankfully there are many tools that we can use to create, deploy, and grade with electronic rubrics. In this blog post we will look at four such rubric tools and how they work. The tools range from simple to complex, so hopefully you will find one that matches your needs, or inspires you to try out a rubric for an upcoming assignment.

Do you know how to learn? Many people don’t. Specifically, they don’t know how to look inward to examine how they learn and to judge which methods are effective. That’s where metacognitive strategies come in. They are techniques that help people become more successful learners. Shouldn’t this be a crucial goal of instructional design? Improved metacognition can facilitate both formal and informal learning. It can improve the performance of new tasks on the job and help teams problem solve more effectively. But let’s start at the beginning. Here are some things learning professionals should know about metacognition.

Renowned teacher, author, and international presenter Starr Sackstein says that number and letter grades lie about student achievement. She thinks schools and colleges should throw out grades. Learn what Sackstein says is the best way to truly assess learning.

Mobile learning has brought learning to people so effectively that they have access to courses and information at their fingertips. This has enhanced the learning habits of people at large who have time constraints, are mostly on the move, and a few other factors. When learners are mostly accessing their smartphones, learning can happen anyplace, anytime. This infographic brings to you the seven key benefits of mobile learning and why people prefer this method of learning. These are:

In a move designed to lower student costs and improve access to learning, Cengage, an education and technology company, recently announced Cengage Unlimited. This first-of-its-kind subscription gives students access to all the company’s digital higher education materials—more than 20,000 products across 70 disciplines and more than 675 courses—for $119.99 a semester, no matter how many Cengage materials they use.

High costs are limiting too many students from being able to access and succeed in their learning,” said Michael Hansen, CEO, Cengage. “Students are either spending hundreds of dollars a year on materials, or else put off buying them altogether because they can’t afford them. And, for many students who do find a way, it is because they are taking on student loan debt that will impact them for years.

With Cengage Unlimited, students finally have an alternative to the traditional and costly approach of paying for each course’s materials individually. We are taking unprecedented action to break down cost barriers and end the cycle of students having to choose between course materials they can afford and the results they want,” Hansen continued.

A number of insightful writers have suggested the skills that people need in order to cope with the 21st century. One of my favourites that appears to summarise all of them is from Jackie Gerstein who has put together a neat pictorial of these skills. See also Tony Wanger’s work, which Jackie acknowledges.

The skills she has identified are: effective oral and written communication; collaboration across networks; agility and adaptability; grit; resilience; empathy and global stewardship; vision; self-regulation; hope and optimism; curiosity and imagination; initiative and entrepreneurialism; and critical thinking and problem solving.

We all know that properly trained sales reps are adept at closing deals effectively, and thereby, augment companies’, improve their bottom line. Effective training enables salespeople to understand the needs of customers and offer the right solution to meet the needs. This, in turn, ensures the loyalty of customers and brings in more revenue.

In recent years, most companies are moving their sales training programs online. Factors such as reduction in training expenditure and the facility to enable busy learners choose their own convenient learning paths are the major reasons for the growing use of e-learning to train sales reps. Today, we will examine 4 online learning tools that are very useful to impart high-quality training to your sales force.

According to Babson Survey Research Group, the number of students registered in online courses grew to 5.8 million nationally. Online class growth has been consistent for the past 13 years, and more than a quarter of higher education students (or 28%) are enrolled in at least one online course.

Also, Imo Education predicts that by 2019 at least 50% of all classes will be delivered online.

Online degrees accredited by respected institutions are on the rise, opening doors for students worldwide to earn comprehensive higher educations. There have still been many skeptics in the upper echelons of traditional academia, who see online learning as a disruptive and possibly detrimental force to education. However, maybe the tide is turning.

The progression of MOOCs over the past decade has given e-learning providers and edtech companies reason for hope. First introduced in 2006, the height of the MOOC frenzy is often traced to 2012, with the launch and rise of Khan Academy, and hundreds have since followed the model of providing short, and often free, courses online.

Open education is an umbrella term under which different understandings of open education can be accommodated. It goes beyond open educational resources (OER) and open research outputs to embrace strategic decisions, teaching methods, collaborations between individuals and institutions, recognition of non-formal learning and different ways of making content available.

Open education is a way of carrying out education, often using digital technologies. Its aim is to widen access and participation to everyone by removing barriers and making learning accessible, abundant, and customisable for all.

It offers multiple ways of teaching and learning, building and sharing knowledge. It also provides a variety of access routes to formal and non-formal education, and connects the two.

Stakeholders must explore ways in which to support opening up education. Dialogue must be sought to form a common vision for opening up education in Europe. OpenEdu Policies is a project running from January 2016 to March 2017 aiming to scope, refine and propose policies on opening up education for both policy makers in Member States and at European level.

The policies proposed will cover the 10 dimensions of open education and will be based on the OpenEdu framework for openness in higher education (Forthcoming JRC report: Opening up Education: A Support Framework for Higher Education Institutions).

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.